Mine too. Being a happy, healthy, and attractive person is a good way to do that; it has the advantage of possibly enticing the other person to want to work with you to save the marriage.
You miss my point. With CeMar, I am making the assumption that his wife will NOT want to work on the marriage because doing so is scary for her. This is a new thought for me regarding CeMar, only because he recently divulged more about his W. It paints a completely different picture of CeMar’s sitch, IMO.
The person not being happy with himself is going to interfere greatly with his partner's enjoyment of the relationship. He can end up being temporarily happy within the relationship.
Do you really think CeMar’s wife is happy? She may think so in her own way of seeing the world, but if she has abuse issues, it could be she is constantly living in fear of being engulfed in some way. Yet she still wants companionship, as do all people, so she likes having CeMar in the room. He gives her a sense of safety and protection. But with abuse (say she was raped as a child) too much intimacy brings out the fears and makes her pull away. This is exactly what Corri has been struggling with.
But the difference is between seeing a split as an unfathomable disaster and seeing a split as a painful occasion that can be endured with happy times alone or with a new partner waiting on the other side.
I don’t anyone’s objective here is to endure happy times alone, as happy as being alone will allow you to be. I also think waiting with the idea of having a new partner is not committing to the marriage and destined for failure. If you have one foot out the door, you might as well leave now.
Fearless,
Interesting. I won't bother "arguing" the point if it works for you. It's just something I haven't seen and do not feel myself. So I wouldn't be able to support that concept for anyone else.
I don’t want my comment to sound wrong. I know it is important not to depend too much on another for your own happiness, or at least to an “unhealthy” extent, whatever that is. But isn’t that a form of self defense, to protect against the possibility that another person may leave and hurt you? If that other person is the perfect match and will never leave you, is there any reason to fear losing this “source” of happiness? So is cutting dependency on another really the path to greater self happiness or to self protection?
Because the work each of us can do on ourselves is almost limitless, I do not know where you draw the line on how much self work is required before you can be happy. If you are happy with another person, then you’re happy. If you’re unhappy alone, then don’t be alone. Just be healthy enough to find and hang on to someone who isn’t going to leave you.
I’ve known people who were happy alone, or thought they were. But after meeting their “soul mate” their happiness jumps to another level. So who are we kidding? I guess my point in all of this is that CeMar does need to work on himself, but I also think he needs to find a way to pull his wife to a new level, if he is ever going to be truly happy. She needs to step up and his burden is to find a way to cause her to do this, whatever form of cage rattling that may involve.
CeMar,
Care to divulge more about your wife’s issues? Why is she so uncomfortable with intimacy? What happened to her? How about you?
